Community Cares Displaying items by tag: grant
Mayor Karl Dean today announced that the Wallace Foundation has awarded a grant of $765,000 to strengthen and expand the Nashville After Zone Alliance (NAZA), an initiative he started to provide free, high-quality afterschool programs for at-risk students in Nashville middle schools.
NAZA currently serves 400 students, and the grant will allow the program to nearly triple in size by serving an additional 750 students. Nashville was among just nine cities singled out to receive grants because of its leadership and commitment to afterschool programs.
“We are investing in afterschool programs because we know that when middle school students have engaging experiences, they are much more likely to stay interested in school and graduate from high school – which is not only good for them, but good for our entire city,” Dean said.
“We have been expanding NAZA strategically, and as our city’s budget allows,” he said. “With this grant from the Wallace Foundation, our expansion plans will be expedited greatly. Students who would have been out of middle school by the time this program reached their neighborhood will now have the benefit of participating in NAZA. We will never know just how many dropouts this grant will help us prevent, but we know its impact will be big.”
NAZA was formed in 2009 by Dean as a partnership between the Mayor’s Office and Metro Nashville Public Schools to provide free afterschool programs for students who couldn’t participate in existing programs due to cost or transportation issues. Programs are run by multiple youth-serving Nashville organizations either on-site at Metro middle schools or at community-based sites. There are currently 18 afterschool NAZA sites that offer academic and enrichment activities, including art and music.
The grant from the New York-based national Wallace Foundation will help underwrite the launch of a new zone each fall for the next three years, starting with a Northwest Zone next school year for students in the Whites Creek/Pearl-Cohn clusters and a Southeast Zone in 2013 for students in the Cane Ridge/Antioch clusters.
The first NAZA program was launched two years ago in the Northeast Zone with the Martha O’Bryan Center as its coordinating agency, serving more than 200 Maplewood and Stratford cluster students, in partnership with the Village Community Development Corp., the YMCA and the YWCA.
The South Central Zone was added last year to serve an additional 200 students from the Glencliff and Overton cluster schools. Partners include the PENCIL Foundation, Metro Parks, the Center for Refugees and Immigrants of Tennessee, the YMCA, Catholic Charities and the YWCA.
Other cities receiving the system-building grants are Baltimore, Denver, Fort Worth, Grand Rapids, Jacksonville, Louisville, Philadelphia and St. Paul. Cities were selected for being well-positioned to build on work they had already started. Fewer than 10 percent of Metro Schools’ low-income middle-school students currently get an opportunity for safe and enriching afterschool programming.
“Research tells us that more children and teens can get access to high-quality afterschool experiences when communities coordinate the work of the many different groups involved,” said Nancy Devine, director of communities at the Wallace Foundation. “We want to encourage more cities to adopt this system-building approach, and one of the things we can expect to see is more cooperation between schools and afterschool programs as they collaborate to better the education of our neediest urban kids.”
About the Wallace Foundation The Wallace Foundation is an independent, national foundation dedicated to supporting and sharing effective ideas and practices that expand learning and enrichment opportunities for children. The Foundation maintains an online library of lessons at www.wallacefoundation.org about what it has learned, including knowledge from its current efforts aimed at: strengthening educational leadership to improve student achievement; helping disadvantaged students gain more time for learning through summer learning and an extended school day and year; enhancing out-of-school time opportunities; and building appreciation and demand for the arts.
The Tennessee Justice Center (TJC) has been awarded a $32,966 grant from Baptist Healing Trust to support TJC’s Legal Advocacy, Education, Services, and Empowerment (LEASE) program which works to ensure access to medical care for children in middle Tennessee. This is the third time that TJC has received a grant from Baptist Healing Trust (BHT), a private grant-making foundation that strives to further the work of Middle Tennessee nonprofits providing health services to underserved populations. Since 2008, BHT awarded TJC more than $100,000 in support of LEASE. The most recent grant award will allow TJC to continue and expand this vital program serving Tennessee children and families.
The impact of LEASE and the importance of the support provided by Baptist Healing Trust are demonstrated in the stories of two of the children and families helped by TJC through LEASE.
Ensuring Access to Medicine Ms. Jones adopted Renée when she was three years old. Now aged 19, Renée has a mood disorder and a heart condition. When her doctor prescribed medicine for her mood disorder, TennCare paid for the medicine for several months. Then, a pharmacist told Ms. Jones that TennCare would no longer pay for it. At that point, Ms. Jones did not receive a notice about how to appeal this decision. Forced to pay out of pocket, Ms. Jones used a pharmacy mail order program to save money. Then she contacted TJC to see if TJC could help her get the medicine. TJC informed Ms. Jones that TennCare should pay for all the care that is medically necessary for her daughter. TJC wrote a letter to TennCare’s lawyers to fix the problem. TJC determined that there was a miscommunication between the pharmacy staff, Renée’s doctor, and TennCare. The State agreed to retrain the pharmacy staff to avoid future mix-ups. Ms. Jones went back to the pharmacy and the medicine was covered by TennCare. Renée continued to get the care she needed, and Ms. Jones learned a new way to advocate for her daughter.
Keeping Troubled Youth Safe Timothee is a Cookeville teenager who loves riding his bike, helping with yard work, and playing video games. However, as Timothee has grown older, his behavior has become problematic and increasingly unpredictable. His mother Cathy feared he was becoming a danger to himself. Having tried various mental health care treatments for Timothee, Cathy began looking into residential treatment. Timothee received an assessment stating that he would benefit from residential treatment, so she was very surprised to find out that Timothee’s TennCare HMO would not pay for residential treatment for him. She didn’t know where to turn, until a Youth Services Officer at the local juvenile court told her to contact the Tennessee Justice Center. TJC wrote a letter to TennCare’s lawyers, opened an appeal on Timothee’s behalf and contacted the State’s Crisis Management Team (CMT). The CMT made sure that Timothee received treatment while waiting for the outcome of the appeal. Then, TJC helped Cathy get an attorney to represent her at the hearing for residential treatment. The hearing will happen soon and TJC feels confident that Timothee will continue to get the help he needs.
The Tennessee Justice Center (TJC) is a non-profit public interest law and advocacy firm serving Tennessee’s families. It gives priority to policy issues and civil cases in which the most basic necessities of life are at stake and where advocacy can benefit needy families statewide. TJC works to empower its clients by holding government accountable for its policies and actions. TJC was established in 1996 and is located at 301 Charlotte Avenue, Nashville, TN. For additional information about the Tennessee Justice Center and its services, visit www.tnjustice.org or call 615-255-0331.
